tightrope

An except from my journal, “Why is it so hard to stay riveted on God?! Why when I freely proclaim and hold such gratitude for all that He’s done for me and that He’s saved me from, do I so quickly ‘burn out’? Is it the same peculiar personality trait that makes me an addict – a facet of my internal self-destruct, my immediate gratification demands – or do others struggle with this very same thing? I’m afraid and I don’t know of what. God help me.”

I am the woman on the tightrope, only there is no netting below (back up plans are for those who aren’t truly committed). One wrong move and I fall, a breath’s distraction and I lose everything. The wire burns against the sole of my feet, steadily dependable. I’m not afraid of falling, that idea hasn’t even crossed my mind.

I”m afraid of jumping.

I don’t want to. I don’t want to go anywhere, to look away, to lose my path. I have never felt anything like the powerful love of Christ. I have never known freedom like I do when I know myself in Him. There is nothing – no drug, no scene, no release – that could be compared to Him. And as so often we sing, “it’s overwhelming”. To time and again fall only to be lifted back up, time and again to turn away only to be found and restored, His love is beyond anything I could paint with mere words or song. I don’t want to lose this. But sometimes it feels like that’s just what I want and that, really, it’s just not up to me.

I’m afraid of jumping.

Because good things don’t come to those who are undeserving and history has warned me that moments of peace are followed by years of tumult and it might be better to sell myself short before the truth comes out anyway. Whatever that is. I think that’s what I’m afraid of…whatever the truth might be.

And I wonder, those who wag their fingers and name me as proud, what kind of arrogance is it to think you deserve to be where He has brought you? What kind of dismissive gratitude says ‘thanks very much now pass the host’? How do you manage to sit the fatness of your bottoms in these chairs of comfort and pass that labeling gaze on those still struggling to arrive, when the very fires of hell are still cooling from your heels!

And so, I am the woman on the tightrope and, every so often, I forget to keep my eyes on Him and I look instead to the body of His church, the truly lost, and the sorrow freezes my progress.